NY Times Confirms: New Hampshire Is The Las Vegas Of American Politics

By Michael Graham, NH Journal

When you think of life in New Hampshire, what comes to mind? The White Mountains? Dunkin’ Donuts? “Live Free or Die?”

Maybe.

But for the rest of the country, we are all about the primaries, campaigns, and debates.

New Hampshire is the Las Vegas of American politics.

An analysis of The New York Times’ local and national coverage of the 50 states (and Washington, D.C.) since the year 2000 — more than 224,000 articles — found the First in the Nation presidential primary was the top topic of its coverage.

Or as The Times’ Ted Alcorn, who did the analysis, put it, “A state covered like a quadrennial event, for its primaries. They make up 32% of all NH coverage.”

The Times’ Granite State coverage, as sparse as it may be, is dominated by politics: “Primaries and Caucuses; Political Advertising; Endorsements; Political Debates and Political Action Committees.”

Not a single non-politics topic on the list. Not Adam Sandler, not Sarah Silverman — not even Ghislaine Maxwell.

Not sexy, perhaps, but an improvement over most of the other New England States:

• Connecticut: “Bribery.”
• Massachusetts: “Priests” (as in the Catholic Church scandal).
• Maine: “Lobsters.”
• Vermont: Heroin.”

The one exception, and unquestionably the regional winner:

• Rhode Island: “Fireworks.”

According to Alcorn, the results are from his analysis of The Times coverage as he looked, not for the most common stories, but “to see which topics in each state get covered out of proportion to the rest of the country.”

In other words, some stories, such as crime and election results, received similar treatment from coast to coast. They are the topics that got an unusual amount of the Times’ coverage.

And while “primaries and caucuses” may not promote the Granite State as a great tourist destination, it’s a reminder of just how central politics is to the character of the state — yet another argument for keeping the First in the Nation presidential primary here.

Not only that, but it’s far better than some other states: “Hazing” (Pennsylvania), “Voter Fraud” (Georgia), and “Tolls” (New Jersey, of course).

Not that New Hampshire’s news coverage was the best in the nation. Kentucky’s top story is better tasting (“Bourbon”) and, depending on your viewpoint, “polygamy” is definitely more sexy (Utah).

The winner? Washington state with “Murder hornets.” What’s cooler than that?

The state-by-state breakdown can be found on Twitter.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.